The Difference Isn’t In the Famine, It’s In the Father
Famines are unavoidable in a fallen world; the question is who is with us in them
“And there came a great famine in that land” (Luke 15:14).
And thus, the lost son is exiled to fields of swine.
The cause of this exile is not ultimately the famine, however. What has reduced the son to a caretaker of pigs is his rejection of his father.
The son has received his father’s life and being (“ουσίας,” “βίον,” 15:12–13) as his own, but he has abandoned his father’s love and squandered his father’s being. And so, when the famine comes, the son has no father to whom to turn. He has only the pigs and their owner, neither of whom is particularly generous when it comes to giving good gifts to this son (15:16).
The difference in his location is not, however, due to the famine. Famine is, after all, no more or less likely to happen in “a far country” (15:13) than on the father’s land. Rain and the lack thereof falls on both the just and the unjust, whether they happen to reside in far countries or in their father’s fields.
The difference isn’t in the power of the famine; it’s in the presence of father.
When famine falls in the father’s fields, the wise father has stocked sufficient resources in his storehouses for his household to endure, and these resources are given freely to his sons.
When the famine falls on a son who is far from his father’s house, there is no storehouse; there is only the swine.
The presence of the father is the difference between whether the son is sent to the storehouse or to swine.
Times of famine are unavoidable in a fallen world. Sometimes, they look like a literal lack of rain, but more often they look more like …
… seasons when the soil of our souls is too dry for joy to take root,
… financial droughts when the days in the month always seem to outlast the dollars in the bank,
… famines of energy when we simply don’t have the strength to move forward,
… emotional deficits when the trauma of our past life drains every drop of happiness from our present life.
In those seasons, we sometimes wonder if there is any difference between living in the far country or in the Father’s house. After all, the famine comes either way! Why not step into the slime of the swine, if I have to endure famine anyway? Why cling to the Father’s word in seasons of famine?
But our heavenly Father is a wise father, and his storehouses are full.
What he holds in his storehouses are the riches of his own being. What we receive when we run to him is the gift of himself and his love for us—which is, after all, all that the younger son had left once he had squandered his inheritance (15:31). Even when we have wasted the gifts our Father has given to us, there is always more of our Father’s love for us when we run to him.
The storehouses of his presence and his love do not prevent us from facing famine, but they can sustain us through the famine.
And the presence of our Father here and now—even when we do not sense it—is a reminder that our famines never have the final word.
Sometimes, our famines end in this life, but some famines don’t end until the next life. And yet, no matter when our famines end, the difference is not in the famine; the difference is in the Father.